Cracked Pavement
by Bibliotecaria.D
Summary: Once Raoul met Tracks, neither of them could go back to how they were. This is just how things are.
1. Chapter 1

**Once Raoul met Tracks, neither of them could go back to how they were. This is just how things are.**

* * *

**Title: **Cracked Pavement

**Warning: **Racism. Man and machine inching toward a relationship despite reality.

**Rating: ** PG-13

**Continuity: **G1

**Characters: **Raoul, Tracks

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.

**Motivation (Prompt): **Someone asked for Raoul/Tracks porn. The more I thought about the pairing, the more this idea formed instead.

* * *

**[* * * * *]**

"Error"

**[* * * * *]**

* * *

"You don't belong in my world," Tracks says. "This is our war, not yours."

You stare up at him because you don't have words to tell him how much you disagree. He banged into your life as a jacked car that suddenly talked, and he thinks your universe has been turned upside-down because the Geddis brothers turned out to be working for some kind of giant evil alien robots.? Somehow, it doesn't occur to him to wonder how much you don't care that the Geddis brothers had a bigger boss up the line.

All the minor gangs have a bigger gang boss. Out on the street, it's a family-hierarchal structure that runs the neighborhoods. The Geddis' block belonged to the Changle 4-block, and the Changle 4-block was part of the larger Chains. Rumor says the Chains gang is run by the mafia, but another rumor says there's something called the Foot Clan muscling in.

That's the bigger picture. Down here on the streets outside your door, the Geddis brothers had your ass in a sling because you got into debt pulling Poplock's balls out of the fire because he did some stupid shit. Stupid, but necessary. His ma's a lot of things, but family's family. She pays the bills any way she can, and Poplock got her into the hospital despite how much that shit costs. You don't forget your family down here. You do what you've got to do and worry about the price later.

War? This walking car thinks you don't know _war_? War's what you got on your doorstep, man. War's what put your cousin into the military and your baby brother into a grave. One took a bullet and the other ate a gun, but nobody cares if two more 'spics kick it. Cops asked if you owned gun and fingerprinted you as a damn suspect while your ma wailed and rocked on the couch, and your _tía_ don't talk to nobody outside the family anymore after the government refused to tell her what happened. Suicide wasn't Rodriguez, not like you remember him, but that's what the military says.

You got blood on your boots and motor oil in your hair. You got dead family and candles to light at church, and Tracks talks down to you like you don't know what you did tonight. He's turning away with all that damn arrogance his high-and-mighty accent's got. Sounds like something from a movie. You've got teachers who dismiss you like this, like you don't have the brains to understand their big words and high literature. They don't get it. They don't see anything but crime when they go down to the barrio.

Apparently it's only war if people important _to them _start dying.

"Yeah," you sneer up at him. "Get off our the streets. These're our battles. Fuck if you know how to fight on our level, machine."

He stops and turns to blink down at you, but you've had enough of his world. You're already walking home.

* * *

**[* * * * *]**

"Stop that."

**[* * * * *]**

* * *

"You **what**?!"

The voice comes from all around them, but Poplock and Rocksteady don't even notice. They're too mellow. They'd gotten two hits in before Tracks even noticed that they aren't smoking normal cigarettes. Now the car's practically vibrating as the A/C vents suck the pot smoke away. Too late, man, too late.

You roll your head back on the seat and smile up at the roof of the car. "What, you didn't notice? Thought the overdone hello was a dead give-away, 'main machine.'"

Tracks has enough decency to cough awkwardly. "I, yes. I did notice that you seemed to…forgive my absence rather quickly. I thought perhaps it had to do with showing off to your friends. I - it is nice to see you."

Six months without a damn word, and he thought you'd jump for joy to see him? Excitement and sarcasm kind of blend together when you're high. Must have worked too well. Huh.

You rock your head back and forth. "Nice. Yeah. Whatever. Look, your friend gonna jam with us or not? 'Cause I got better friends to depend on, it comes to that." Rachel owes you a sweet one. She won't be able to drop off her 'box before the end of the night, but no rush.

Rocksteady nudges your shoulder, and you reach back absently to take the joint.

A second later it's out the window as a seatbelt clicks. "Hey," you protest. Poplock and Rocksteady blink, wondering what happened, but it looks like the ride don't approve of that shit.

"Stop that," Tracks says, fierce and quiet. "Drugs are illegal. I should turn you in to the station for that."

All three of you laugh. "Yeah, you do that," you say around the ache in your throat that hurts in a familiar way. You don't know why you didn't expect this betrayal, but you'll never let the slight hurt show. "We all got records for possession. Who cares if we do another year or two?"

There's a brief silence, quiet as a Corvette idling at a red light. "Your record has a notation from the arresting officer," the car says softly after the hysterical giggles in the backseats die away. "He believed you took the bag off your younger cousin to keep her in school."

"Might've." You pluck at the seatbelt. It tightens across your chest in response. "Might not've. What'dya care, Tracks? You got your war. Go back to it. Let us fight our own battles. Look how well that went, eh?" You don't do pot often, but you're not going to say that to this guy. He's going to go back to his Autobots and not speak to you again. It doesn't pay to invest anything in visitors. Tracks is a tourist, like some do-gooder missionary from out-of-state trying to 'clean up the streets.'

"Don't you even care that the Decepticons almost killed you again?" Tracks asked, a hint of frustration in his cultured voice.

You reach out and curl your fingers around the steering wheel, one at a time. Riding the whisps of pot smoke you'd gotten before Tracks killed the joint, there's a kind of fascination in rubbing your fingers against the leather. You wonder if it's real leather. Fake alien imitation animal skin? Was that a thing? "You take me down to the station, I gotta bigger risk of not lasting the night," you tell him, because it's true. This late at night, by the time they throw you out or put you in for the night, one or the other's going to get the shit kicked out of you before you get home.

"What kind of world is this?" he asks, frustrated by your casualness, and you close your eyes.

You hurl his words back at him: "One you don't belong in."

* * *

**[* * * * *]**

Engine

**[* * * * *]**

* * *

He's outside on the curb when you wake up three days later. A car that flashy stands out. Anything but an Autobot would have been broken into already.

"¿Qué es eso?" Tía Cinthia asks as she parts the lace curtain and peers out warily. She's 83. Abuela Guerra's been gone ten years or better now, but your great-aunt moved in the day ma died. Nobody said it, but they were all afraid you were going to do something crazy. They figured somebody had to try and keep you together.

Yeah, well, you grew up good for this neighborhood. It took until you were 17 for you to do something stupid enough to get caught, but when you do stupid, you do it good. Alien robots and carjacking and, damn, you even get mixed up with street-dancing in style. You still have a headache from three nights ago.

You stick your spoon in your cornflakes and ignore the cup of champurrado Tía Cinthia made you. Someday, she'll understand that you drink coffee in the morning.

Of course, sometimes she still thinks you're your cousin and makes breakfast 'for the army boy.' Those aren't good mornings.

Chewing on the cornflakes, you frown and take the cup of champurrado. What the hell. Any morning without having to explain to your tía that Rodriguez is dead is a good morning.

Although she seems set on ruining your mood. "¿Qué es eso?" she repeats insistently. "¿No es esa máquina, no? Cosa atea. No tiene alma. Aléjate de ella, va a traer al demonio a nuestra casa. ¿No tenemos suficiente violencia aquí? Porque deben las máquinas venir a nuestro mundo y traer más..."

According to the church, the Autobots don't have souls. You should have known she'd fixate on that. Godless things without souls, bringing war into the barrio. "They've probably got their own gods, tía," you say low. You're not trying to start an argument. You're just thinking that the thing beside Track's engine leaked light that didn't seem to belong to this world, and that cultured voice went weirdly breathy and high when you touched it. Static made your hair bristle, and that light...

That light looked like the way the stained glass windows in the cathedral look, like halos around the saints. Engines beside the halos, metal doors on the saints.

What in all that was holy was Tracks doing here? He said he saw your police record, so it's no surprise he knows where you live. But why?

Tía Cinthia's still giving you an utterly appalled look for the comment about other gods, but you kiss her on the cheek as you put your empty bowl and cup in the sink. "I'm going out," you tell her. "You want me to pick up dinner tonight?"

"No," she says weakly, holding onto your hand and refusing to let go. You don't think she's objecting to dinner. "Escuela."

You dropped out before you got in with the Geddis brothers. You stayed in longer than anybody you hang with, but not longer than your younger cousin if you have anything to say about it. "Not today, Tía."

You get to the door before she bursts out, "No vayas. Ésto no está bien."

What can you say? You know she's right. Nothing good brings the Autobots to you. It's a tourist slumming, an outreach missionary from some Midwest church showing up convinced he can save a lost soul, or maybe it's just the other gang turning up to fight off the Decepticons who keep claiming turf on your streets. Taking sides probably won't end well for anybody.

"I know," you say, but you open the door.

"Rezaré por ti," follows you out the door. When you look up at the apartment from the street, you see old hands around a rosary behind the lace curtains.

You still walk down toward the Corvette on the curb.

* * *

**[* * * * *]**

Antithesis

**[* * * * *]**

* * *

You prop your hip against the table and think about sitting down just to honk these middle-class stuck-up assholes off. They think they're working class. They got savings. Shit, they got a house. One of them owns a garage that everybody knows is a front for the aliens. It's why nobody brings their ride there. Only people who bring their cars to that garage are the ones who can afford the pretty price tag.

"What's the deal?" you say instead of sitting down, and you flash a smile at the stocky guy who didn't bother lowering his voice when he protested you walking in. "My main machine here didn't spill it. Why you bring a beaner in?" You're laying it on thick, throwing a Speedy Gonzalez whine into your voice to mock the whole thing.

You're still mad at Tracks, but he's the closest thing to an ally you got here. In front of you are two white guys sitting at the table like they're sitting judgment, and no way. You're not sitting down at that table with them, not even to put your boots up and laugh. The kid can't look at you straight, uncomfortable and trying so hard not to bring up race it's like an elephant in the room. The man's already had his say, and none too quiet.

Fuck him. Fuck them both. Tracks said the Autobots want your opinion on something. He asked you to come down here. You came. Now you wish you hadn't seen Poprocks watching and gone with Tracks just to make the posse jealous. You don't need a white guy looking down his nose at you. You want that, you can go apply for a job down the block.

"We'd like to ask a few questions about what happened at Dancitron the other night," one of the taller robots says. You feel like you should know him from TV or something, but he hasn't shot at you, so you don't remember him. "We find it strange that nobody reported anything wrong until you drew our attention to the club. Is it possible that the Decepticons have infiltrated other areas of New York City? Could you tell us where they're likely to target next?"

Blinking, you decide this mofo's serious. "Look, you didn't get no calls for help because nobody on that end gives a shit where they spent the night, or if they wake up with blood on their knuckles. Half of them do drugs to get through the day. They ain't reporting nothing that'll get police in there." You shake your head at them. "Those Decepticons? They could've controlled six more joints before anybody took notice. That's just how it is." Foot Clan had an entire series of warehouse clubs set up for the kids, you hear. Parents reported it all the time, but the cops wouldn't bust a place that paid the bribes. It was asking for trouble to bust up the powerful gangs.

"Figures," the white guy says, and you stare at him. White guy in a button down shirt and a smug look of 'I Told You So' plastered all over his fat face.

He looks so satisfied with himself you want to defend your neighborhood just to throw him down. You want to tell him about the soup kitchen and the choir, the nuns from St. Hilda's and Rocksteady's pa. You want to make him see the streets instead of the stereotypes, but hell. You don't give a crap, not really.

Because the truth of it is that you can say everything, but it won't change his mind at all. He's already made it up. You've got a brown face, and that's all he sees and hears.

"That's why," you say up at Tracks, ignoring the rest of them. Your hand is steady, pointing at the guy across the table. "That's why nobody said nothin'. And it's why we won't say anything when they come back. At least when the 'Cons treat us like shit, we know why. We're all human, to them." You shake your head and push off the table, ready to leave. "We're all just human."

**[* * * * *]**

Hiccups

**[* * * * *]**

When you were a kid, you'd get the hiccups when you cried. It wasn't from sadness. It was the anger. Your chest heaved over and over again until something started to catch, and then you'd hiccup while the tears streaked down your face.

"Boys don't cry," ma said, but what she meant was that men can't show weakness. Not on the streets of NYC. You don't dare show that kind of pain to strangers. After a while, you don't dare show it to your friends, either. It becomes a habit, then, and you wall out your family, too.

It's the curse of men in the barrios. You show your passion, you show your rage, but grief can only come out in anger and violence. Anything else is a weakness. Giving the world shoving your face into the pavement the satisfaction of seeing you cry? Hell no. Nobody gets that victory. You'll tear triumph out of defeat and show nothing but a scowl. The world taunts the men with tears running down their faces. Fierce defiance is the only reaction that doesn't beat a man's pride into the ground.

That's how it is.

You cried at your brother's funeral. You cried until you hiccupped, anger and sadness becoming a grief your body struggled to express any other way.

You gritted your teeth and held your breath until your eyes burned at your cousin's funeral. He's considered a suicide. The priest told your family he won't go to Heaven, and you wished you could cry for his tortured soul. But you were a man, so you swallowed the tears over and over again. Between swallows, the hiccups escaped.

You showed nothing at your ma's funeral. Nothing at all, but you hiccupped, mouth shut tight but shoulders jerking.

The world isn't fair. You can't remember anytime you've been sad without being angry at that unfairness, too. The sadness, you can repress. It's the anger that tears out of you, one way or another.

Today, the seat under you shivers every time your body shakes with the hiccups. It's anger, not grief, that shakes you. Heck, maybe it's grief. You're grieving the idea that things would be different than reality is.

"Where do you wish to be dropped off?" Tracks asks, subdued.

Your words stutter mid-sentence with a hiccup, but you push it down to answer, "In fr-front of my place's fine."

He falls silent, rolling along with a smoothness you have to admire. He's a beautiful machine. Just…he's not your machine. He's a tourist, here to look around and then leave. Talking to those other Autobots only solidified your opinion on that. Sure, they'll do some patrols. They'll stake out some of the clubs. They won't change a damn thing, but they'll make a few arrests and scare a gang or two back to their home turf for a couple weeks. Then the aliens will pat themselves on the back, say they made a 'difference,' and forget about your world.

It makes you so _angry_.

You don't kick the door open when he stops, but only because he is a beautiful machine. You do slam the door. There isn't anybody out on the stoops to impress, this late on a weeknight.

"Raoul," sighs from behind you, and you almost stop. "Please don't be angry at me."

That's the most patronizing thing that's ever been said to you, and that includes Megatron talking over your head like you didn't exist. "It's not about you," you say tightly. "It was nev-ver about you."

* * *

**[* * * * *]**

Singular

**[* * * * *]**

* * *

You laugh in front of your crew, because it's rad to them that you run with the aliens. It's like somebody showing up with a rich relative, you know? There's an element of 'Holy shit, is that real? No way, no way, check out the freak show!' Everybody expects some bragging and showing off.

It is like having a relative around, but not one of the tías. When the tías descend on the apartment, you get out ma's old electric coffeepot and call up Rocksteady to drop off his ma's extra plates so nobody's eating off paperware. It's good manners. Only four of the tías are actually related to you, but that doesn't mean you show disrespect. No lie, you can trace your family back through the block via shared history, failed marriages, and who went to what school or country with whom, but actual blood relatives are hard to call sometimes. Poplock's ma turned tricks back in her day - still does when she's got to make rent and Poplock's dumb with his cash - and she's claimed his pa's four different men. Nobody knows. It's easier just to say he's part of your family than fight over whether Tío Juan was dating Elena and Bethany, or whether he'd done what Poplock's ma said he did that one time.

So your tías aren't all specifically _your_ aunts. They're Poplock's and Rocksteady's and Rachel's and everybody's. Tía Cinthia potters around in the kitchen setting out food she still makes by hand and you can't buy at McDonald's. The door gets left open, and your neighbors come stand outside to take a plate of warm mole with a tortilla and rice. She's up to her elbows in cooking, old face laughing, and you're playing host while three generations of women put their hands on your arms and tell you you've grown into a good man.

This is their version of a good man. You're proud to be it.

You pour their coffee and kiss the older women's cheeks and hands like a gentleman, and the kitchen is full of younger women trying to insist that Tía Cinthia sit down and let them work. It feels good. This is family. This is how family should be. This is how the barrio feels inside the apartments, up off the street where a man can drop the strut because he's already got women hanging off him. Older women, family women, women he's got to care for in his home how he was brought up to. This isn't showing off how tough you are. This is being the man of the house.

Into this comes Tracks, and he doesn't even know the rules of being a relative. He's that weird guest who belongs because he's got a connection - you - but doesn't quite fit in right.

But he's cool, right? You can walk down the street and hear people whispering that you know him. It makes you important, so you own it. You strut and talk it up like it's all good Tracks keeps showing up.

It isn't, not like you're saying it is. It's more like when Tío Pedro's brother came up from Tijuana. He's sleeze, all the tías knew and warned, but the tíos all wanted to be there to talk with him. He had stories nobody can top, but it's a game to one-up tell anyway. It's a game, a competition, out on the apartment steps. When he joined in, it was in good fun. You just didn't leave a skirt alone with him, ever.

The night you came in at 14, school bag on your back, and Tía Cinthia had her arm around Sofía, rheumy eyes hard as she looks up at you from the couch, well. That was that. You knew Tío Pedro's brother will be going back to Tijuana, because nobody's siding with an outsider.

"You don't actually think he went back to Tijuana," Tracks asks you, and it's a troubled question. He's afraid he already knows the answer.

"Naw, mech, I'm not an idiot. Stop asking me stuff like you think I don't know what went down. I know. You know, and you weren't even there." You swing your feet above the city. One nice thing about knowing an alien car: it can fly. City looks different sitting up on a building this tall. "That's how the neighborhood runs, you get it? The tías don't got laws and crap the cops do, but the cops don't look twice at a 'spic girl with a bruised face. That's against **our** rules. If we don't do something 'bout it, who's gonna stop it? I remember him. He could break before it rocked the clubs, and I was 14. Everybody with some cash and a popped collar's got the groove at that age. I liked him, y'see?" You shrug. "But he ain't like Rocksteady's pa. His pa takes a swing at his ma when he gets drunk enough, and nobody says anything 'cause that's how they've always been. They deal with their bruises, but they're one of us. We know what's going on there. It ain't cool, it ain't right, but you don't diss their style. This guy comes in and does stuff to one of us? He thinks he **owns** us? He thinks he's got a **right**?"

You look over New York City, and it's dark and light. Always has been. It's just more obvious at night. "Just 'cause he's got money and a brother here doesn't make him one of us. Yeah, I think he went back to Tijuana." You snort your contempt. "I just don't care how many pieces he arrived in."

Tracks stares at you, those weird blue eyes of his glassy and more emotional than a robot's should be. You think that, but you still remember the strange not-car-part that was beside his engine. Aliens. They look like they belong, transforming into cars, but they don't belong on Earth. Tracks especially doesn't belong in your neighborhood, talking to you like he knows you.

"And you've told me this because…" He hesitates, searching for proper words.

"Don't be that guy," you say bluntly. "Or I'll be saying you went back to wherever the hell you come from."

"Did you just threaten me?"

You laugh, and it isn't the reaction he was expecting. You can see it in the way his head jerks back. "Me? Shit, what'm I gonna do to you? Call the cops? Talk to your super? I ain't got their number, and nobody's gonna take my word on anything. I've got as much authority as any kid on the street."

Any kid who knows how to cut the right line in him. You did it once. You can do it again.

You didn't threaten him. You warned him.

From how he leans away, suddenly disturbed, he understands what he didn't hear you say.

* * *

**[* * * * *]**

battle field

**[* * * * *]**

* * *

"You were never afraid," he says when you're 19.

You lean on the windowsill in the way you've gotten used to. A couple years of visits like this, and you got sick of sitting in his interior. He's a sweet ride, but every passing cop knocks on the windows and asks to see your license and registration. Doesn't matter where in the city you are. Guy looking like you in a car like him? Got to be stolen.

Tracks said a lot about it the first few times. He said less and less about it as time passed, until nowadays he gets onto police dispatch and tells the cops to back off via their radios the second he notices someone walking up to check out the suspicious sight of a 'spic in a car obviously too expensive for his race.

You're more conscience that's what it's about, these days. It's not that you didn't know before, but you just knew it because you grew up knowing it. It took putting the background of the neighborhoods into words to make you really aware of what was going on. You had to spell it for the alien visitor, but it solidified the situation in your head as you did.

Tracks didn't get why Poplocks can get a job at Burger King but Rocksteady can't. He didn't know why the few times he didn't say anything when the cops knocked on the window, they almost tore out his upholstery looking for the drugs you didn't have. Because the only rich beaner is a drugdealer, right? Yeah.

You've got a job working on cars, now, a real job that pays good money, and you got it because you walked into the dealership like it was run by Megatron himself. There isn't much a white guy with a mustache can do to you compared to a giant alien robot, really. You just had to put the world into perspective.

Besides, you listed 'can hotwire an Autobot' under job skills and provided a phone number to back it up when the guy interviewing you scoffed. Tracks showed up in person to tell your now-boss about it. Felt like a dirty trick to call in an Autobot to get you a job, but it got you the job.

Tracks winces every time you tell him about what the customers say about you. It's a good job because it's honest work and pays great. It's not hard to see why more of the men in the neighborhoods can't or won't get those kind of jobs.

The Tompkins Square Park riot is still all over the news. There's a video of a cop calling a lady who looks like Rachel racial slurs she hears every time she calls her landlord to fix the water heater. The news isn't telling you anything you didn't already know. The only surprising part is that the rest of the country is finally taking notice.

You put your foot up on the windowsill and shake your head at him. "I live on a battlefield," you tell the alien robot who comes to your city to relax. To get away from his war. "What did I have to be afraid of?"

For the first time, you think he understands. The Geddis brothers and the Decepticons didn't pull you into a war you didn't belong in. It was just another round fired at you in the war anyone wearing your face fights every day in this city.

* * *

**[* * * * *]**

"damage control."

**[* * * * *]**

* * *

You don't say anything when Tía Cinthia passes. It's quick. At least there's that. She gets shakier and shakier like old folk do, and then she falls down the steps, and she spends one night at the hospital telling you she's fine before you get a call that tells you she wasn't fine.

The arrangements aren't easy to make, but the priest helps you. Your tía knew what she wanted at her funeral, and all you have to do is pay the bills as they show up. You won't be doing anything but working your ass off for the next two years paying that off, but that's the price of a death. The rest of the family chips in as they can.

When the last plate is washed and everybody's gone home, you sit on your couch and stare at the family portrait that's always hung on the opposite wall. There are a lot of ghosts staring back at you, now.

Your shoulders hitch as the hiccups keep hitting. It'd be easier if you could cry, let it out, but you can't. You just sit in numb silence, hiccupping and wishing you felt something.

The phone rings and goes to answering machine, sympathetic voices loud as they leave a message. Everybody knows you're by yourself right now. You're 21 years old and never did more than fool around with a girl or two. Half the neighborhood thinks they know what that means. You're not sure anybody knows, because you sure don't.

One voice is the same as ever. He doesn't know what happened this week.

You get up, eyes dry, and walk to the window in your room, the one on the alley. Tracks stands up and looks up at you. You don't know what you expect, but it's not what you get.

Something twists in your chest, wringing your heart like a rag. You realize you've been waiting for him all week, like he'd somehow know you needed him although how the hell would he know? He's not some kind of mind-reader. You don't think, anyway.

Your shoulders shake with a hiccup, however, and the calm blue eyes (optics, you know, but they're eyes to you still) narrow in concern. "Raoul, what's what wrong?"

It doesn't matter that he can't read your mind. He knows because he knows you, and the pain in your chest gets worse as you hate him a little for that. He's here, and he came for you, but he wasn't here when you needed him before. It's stupid and petty to have expected him to know without telling him. It makes no sense to feel this way.

It does. You just avoided thinking about it until it slams into your face here and now. Thinking about it makes it real. Real, but impossible, and you've lost enough people in your life. You're 21 years old, man. You know better.

The problem is that now you know. Ignorance was bliss.

You close the window and slide down to sit against the wall. Outside, your main machine calls after you. You're not ready to deal with that. You're not sure you'll ever be. Tonight, can't grief be enough?

* * *

**[* * * * *]**

"baseline"

**[* * * * *]**

* * *

There's no normal to go back to, between you. Normal got snapped apart the moment you jacked a talking car, and you've both been gingerly nudging the pieces into a new pattern ever since. Things between you two have always been dealing with one topic at a time, cautiously talking and waiting for that one thing to crop up that you disagree on.

You've been waiting almost five years for the tourist to leave. He hasn't gone. If anything, he visits more often.

He still doesn't belong here. These streets aren't his home, won't ever be, but he's got a pass. You're his green card. He doesn't ever lose that weird accent and the sense that he's delicately treading foreign ground as an observer, but he's got better camo than any missionary. As long as he's a car, he's got a perspective no visitor gets; as long as he's with you, the neighborhood lets him in to see.

It helps that he doesn't talk to anyone but you if he can avoid it. A lot of people don't believe he's the real deal.

"If I hadn't been there, I'd say those Autobots were a hallucination," Rocksteady says to you, and you just nod because you get it.

"I'm in disguise," Tracks says to you when you bring it up. "The less I'm noticed, the less likely it is that the Decepticons will pick up on me, either. If they're looking in this direction to begin with, however, my presence is a discouragement to set foot in the area."

You frown at his steering wheel. "You're here to protect us? I don't buy it." You don't. The police are here to protect people, but they don't just show up and park.

You don't feel protected when a cop car pulls up, anyway. Everyone knows two cops sitting in a car are looking for something they already suspect has happened or will happen. They're not trying to prevent anything.

It sounds more like a military occupation thing, like when Poplock's girl's pa tells stories about escaping the Communists. Armed soldiers on the street corners to make sure people know they're there, that the government is watching. That sort of 'protection.'

But Tracks just rocks on his tires in place of a shrug. "Something like that."

You don't press him, because it feels like one of those topics that can turn into an argument. You both try to avoid those. The longer things have drawn out, the more cautious you've gotten about pushing him to leave. Before, it was defensive: get him to leave before he up and left on his own. Now it's a waiting game, waiting for the day whatever he's waiting for will happen and he won't come back to the barrio. To you.

Normal is the life you had before you jacked a car that talked. Normal's what he had before you started him up.

It's not normal to curl your hands under the lower rim of the steering wheel and shift your jeans against the back of your knuckles, but it's not like things can break apart further. It's just one more strange turn on a strange turn of events. It's where all the crazy cracks and snaps have led to. It's not normal, maybe not even natural, but you're working with what you've got.

His A/C vents flip closed, and you know he's noticed. You keep shifting on his seat, against his steering wheel. It turns in your hands, against your jeans.

There's no normal to go back to. There's only seeing what happens next.

* * *

**[* * * * *]**

"equilibrium"

**[* * * * *]**

* * *

He goes to war.

You've been waiting for this half your life. More than half your life. It's 2005, and you flip your phone shut as Tracks says goodbye. He said it oddly, like he expected you to protest. Like he wanted you to hold on and not let him go. You just hang up.

"I'll come back," he said over the connection you know is his commlink, not a phone. He didn't come to say goodbye. He was already on the ship, ready to launch, because his home planet has been attacked by Decepticons and some big mofo who apparently eats moons or some shit. Your suspension of disbelief can bridge the East River, but your eyebrows climbed into your hair at his hurried explanation. Moon-eating robo-Satan is a new one. You heard about the attack on Autobot City, but shit. Robo-Satan.

It's just as well Tracks didn't come to say goodbye. That might have been too much.

You don't really believe he's coming back. You're 37 years old, too old for fairytale endings, and he's so many times your age you doubt he even remembers how old he is anymore. Twenty years holding steady tips you off the end when he lets go, but he'll just continue on like nothing happened. A blip in time.

Running a hand down your face, you sigh and swallow against the tight clench in your throat. "I'll come back," he said. 'To you,' was unspoken. You guys never talked like that. It's not something that's done, even now that you've moved to a different neighborhood where you don't know everybody and don't care if your neighbors judge you by your face and clothes. It's hard to believe you cared about that stuff, years on.

Then you go back home, and it comes rushing in that this is still how life is for most of your family. You got _lucky._ You got an out, and you escaped, and now you don't have to be the guy you grew up as, because you have the option of only visiting the streets you once lived on.

You thought you reached a level balance, but you've been playing a seesaw game, ready to go down once he steps off.

Tracks is gone. Down you plummet, and you're half your life away from where you started.

* * *

**[* * * * *]**

"Why"

**[* * * * *]**

* * *

"Why?" you asked him, once upon your early twenties. It's a conversation that should have involved bare skin and a dark bedroom, a girl under the covers pressed to you as she asked why you love her.

The car hood under you shifted, because this was what you got instead. No girl, nobody late at night when you stretched out on your bed alone. You got a car that talked, and a history.

And a question.

"The others say you don't have a spark," Tracks said after you waited him out. His cultured, pretentious voice was as insufferable as ever, but he spoke slowly, reluctantly. This wasn't a conversation he wanted to have. It was one you kind of wanted to end as soon as began, but it's one you both needed. There was a lot of stuff unspoken, but this had to be said. "They say you're not real, not like us. You're not like us in the sight of Primus. The two of us…like this…" The hood clicked up, nudging you in place of actually saying what you were doing with each other. "It's…not right, to them. But I knew when I first met you that you - that we aren't that different. You have something. I don't know if it's a spark or not, but you're like me."

"I'd never hear the end of it if the others knew. It would be like - forgive me, Raoul. This would be like bestiality is in your culture."

He sounded incredibly uneasy, and all you could think was that he fucking understood. All the shit you two have gone through together, crime and Decepticons and race, and it was the feel of something real and alive against the palm of your hand that he totally got. No matter what the church or the Autobots said, you weren't that different after all.

"Rezaré por ti," Tía Cinthia had said to you that day as you went out to the meet the soulless machine waiting on the curb. You wonder for the first time who's been praying for Tracks every time he came to NYC to see the sparkless man.

You look up at the sky and a distant war that's taken Tracks from you. It's your turn to say a prayer.

You're not sure what god to pray to.

* * *

**_[ A/N:_**_Translations by Emma! Until the curtain rises next time, m'dears.__**]**_


	2. Chapter 2

**[* * * * *]**

_"__Fundamental"_

**[* * * * *]**

* * *

You're so different it hurts. Metal and flesh are fundamentally different, substructure to surface, and your bodies crave vastly different things. Relationships are close things, touching things, bonds formed of contact, but the kind of contact isn't the same from species to species.

It's part of why even the subject of a human/Cybertronian relationship is taboo among the Autobots. You knew it shouldn't be talked about before you knew why, all the clues adding up in your head the more you were around the big aliens. They try, you know? They try, but it's not natural to them. The friendliest among them still don't reach out without actually thinking about it first, analyzing how they're supposed to fit in to human interactions, and they brace themselves to endure human ways. Bumblebee might call Spike his best friend, but he only tolerates the touchiness of humans for the emotional warmth it generates between them. You've seen him when Spike looks away. His armor draws inward, away from the hand on yellow metal. His expression is fond, affectionate, but he flinches if Carly bumps into him.

You're used to being human, but heck. You know how to be polite. You never get inside Tracks unless he's cool with it, and you don't slap a hand on his leg unless he moves toward you first. You've seen that wincing before, out on the streets. The old homeless veterans on the subway station steps dive for cover if a car backfires, but they cling to strangers' hands for more than loose change or an offer of help. The boys who come home after enlisting eye their girls warily. Hands, soft and kind, familiar or strange, are still hands. Touch has been linked to combat for too long in their heads. Touch is no longer casual.

On Cybertron, touch is professional, the hands of medics or fellow soldiers. Touch is hostility, hand-to-hand combat against Decepticons. Touch was never part of their basic needs. The army boys and the vets want to recover, yearning to be human, to be touched again despite how war's taught them to flinch away from normal things. Cybertronians started out distant, however, and they're not in any hurry to change that.

"I'm sorry," Tracks says in a low voice beside you. The two of you are staring out over the city. It's cold up on the roof of the building where he took you, and you wish you could sit inside him, but he doesn't enjoy it like you do, so you got out to sit on the edge, legs dangling over thin air.

You shrug.

"Organic species cluster together. It's…an aspect of your developing society and your bodies," Tracks tries to explain, and you can practically hear him straining not to insult you with his preconceived ideas of how primitive humans are. "As your technology develops, you'll find physical contact becomes less and less important to relationships. Constant contact through transmissions replaces it until," he hesitates, optics turning away. "Until touching each other becomes a rarity, you might say."

You stare up at him as you imagine it. Constant transmissions? Radio? You know he's talking with the Autobots most of the time he's here, and that flips a switch in your puzzled thoughts.

"You mean like phones?" you ask, thinking of the painfully expensive long-distance calls made by your family back home. Not home in the city, but _home_ home. The home you've never been to and have never had more than stilted conversations through hissing, echoing phone lines with, but even thinking about it, you get it. You _get_ it, man. You've got family in another country that you haven't ever gotten more than a saint's card from, but you'd walk through Hell for them. You grew up in the barrio, and family loyalty doesn't need a hug to be a rock you build your house on, there. It's a solid foundation of old ties and words through a phone.

Hell, the Crusades were launched over a God nobody can touch, and everybody's got somebody in their church who's closer to God than anybody flesh and blood. People don't have to touch to build a relationship when there's communication, by phones or even prayer. With humans, touch is just the easier method.

Tracks blinks at you, surprised. "It's more than that, but essentially - yes."

So war turned touching each other from a neutral to a negative. Electronics are what bridge the gap. It's not so hard to understand. Humans have long-distance relationships, too. Not usually standing beside one another, but you can see how that might work.

"We were never a 'touchy' race," Tracks tells you, amused by your sage nod. "It is more comfortable for me to sit at my fellow Autobot's side than lay a hand on his shoulder. We like…" He pauses again, lenses dilating and contracting behind the blue of his optics as he visibly searches for words. "There's no equivalent in human terms. Not yet."

Years later, computers break into the English language enough for him to explain it to you, but by then you've seen it. It's nice to put words to the personal space bubbles each Autobot carries, but terms like 'electromagnetic field' and 'wireless interface' are just new ways to define what you already knew. Big machines interacting with each other, electronic warmth transmitting through constant contact that doesn't need physical touch to ground itself. You saw Prowl checking in on his soldiers, standing on the fringes of what humans would call a cool, professional distance, barely brushing his personal space against each mech's. Optimus Prime always steps far closer, projecting warmth, taking warmth, melding with his people to build relationships stronger than mere loyalty to a leader.

That doesn't need touch. It doesn't need an explanation of invisible connections for you to see what's happening. You just need to stand back and observe the differences.

You get it, but getting it's not the same as having what you want. Both of you. When you need touch, all you can have is the hard surface contact of metal, impersonal against your skin. When Tracks needs connection, all he can have is the dead, circuit-blind flesh of your body. It's not comfortable for either of you. It doesn't give either of you what you need, and you're both left wanting.

"I'm sorry," Tracks says to you, regret in his voice.

"So'm I," you say back, but neither of you walks away. It may not be what you need, too different and not enough, but it's what you want. You take what you can get.

You don't know what he gets from you, or if it's enough. You do know he keeps opening his door. He opens his door, and you take it as the invitation to an alien intimacy that it is. You slide into his interior, and if it's not a hot and heavy make-out, it's still _something_. Your hand settles heavy on his gearstick, palm cupped over the skin-shined knob, and it wakes a physical craving in the pit of your stomach. You inhale, and the air inside him cycles in time with your breath, his engine thrumming in time with your pulse like he's tuning in to every one of the tiny signs of life you give off.

You lean back, and the feel of him down your spine, under your thighs, against your heels, and across your lap - it hurts inside your chest because this is all you can get. It's more than you ever thought you'd have. He keeps coming back, and you meet him halfway. That's not a lot, not compared to what you want, but it's a compromise between two entirely different species.

The day you shuffle across the rug and lean out the window to zap him with a jolt of static electricity, hair crackling and grinning like a maniac, he looks at you like you've suddenly come alive to him, bright and bold to every sensor. It's the greatest shock you've ever given him, you think, greater than the day you took on Megatron for his sake, and his metal rises to meet your hands.

You touch him for a moment, only a few seconds, leaning over the windowsill, hands outstretched. You can feel him, metal and alien. The palms of your hands remember the feel of him, fingers curling in to guard the memory after you pull back, releasing him from the foreign sensation of touch before he draws away.

It's been too long, but you can still feel him. Years later and light years apart, you gaze up at the light pollution over NYC, searching for the faint white star that might be Cybertron, and you can't find it. It's probably gone, and so is he, but you can still feel him. Your hands open toward the sky as if grasping after a ghost.

"I'll come back," Tracks said. You never expected more than a phone call goodbye, and it's what he gave you. Words over a commline are an intimacy between Cybertronians. To his kind, the distance doesn't matter.

Close as you are, you don't have to touch him to be in contact. You try to make yourself believe it. Your hands clench into fists at your side, empty.

You wish you hadn't let go. Some days, it's all you can do to hold on.

* * *

**[* * * * *]**


End file.
